


a whole lot of red

by tempestaurora



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Angst, Apocalypse, Fluff, I love zombies, M/M, Minor Character Death, Zombie Apocalypse, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-26 10:45:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15661641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tempestaurora/pseuds/tempestaurora
Summary: The apocalypse doesn't give, only takes. And it's already taken too much.Keith's only goal is to make it out alive. Shiro has plenty of goals - one of them being kissing Keith, probably.Also, zombies.





	a whole lot of red

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a year and three months since I last wrote a fan fic so this is surreal as fuck. I finished at exactly 100 fics and started writing original stuff before getting this craving to write fic again. Season seven of Voltron didn't help (what a fuckin great season i loved it so much).
> 
> So here we go: my favourite AU, ZOMBIES.
> 
> There's a bunch of swearing, Keith's always annoyed and I really just wanted to celebrate his friendship with Lance.

**DAY ONE**

Keith’s cigarette fell from his lips when the lady in the middle of the road got back up again.

He’d watched the car tear through her body, heard it screech to a halt moments after, and smelled the tire burn before the acrid scent of blood. It was everywhere – the blood, that is – splattering the road and coating everything with a shade of red that matched Keith’s boots.

It was likely she was dead before she hit the ground, in the moment between her head smashing against the windshield and her body crumpling to the tarmac as the car skidded over her body.

Someone – some pedestrian, middle-aged, male, salt-and-pepper hair – had run out into the road, traffic now piling up in a long, brake-light line. He’d pressed his fingers against the side of her neck (lacerated) and then her wrist (with protruding bone), then checked for breathing (none). He went to perform CPR, and Keith lit a cigarette as he watched, a crowd forming on the pavement and stepping into the road.

That was some shit bad luck, Keith thought. For the woman and the driver, who’d scrambled from their vehicle, screaming and inconsolable. An ambulance had been called, and the sirens were off in the distance, struggling to make their way through the now-blocked roads, when the woman’s still-open eyes darted about.

The man attempting to save her life jumped back in surprise. She snapped up to sitting and Keith exhaled the smoke out his nose as she turned to her saviour and promptly clamped her teeth around his jugular.

The crowd screamed, and she tore the flesh from his neck. Keith’s cigarette fell to the ground and he didn’t bother to stamp it out. Instead, he watched, wide-eyed, heart hammering at his rib cage, as the man with no neck collapsed backwards and convulsed. The woman rose to her feet, the bones still broken and unstable, and started shuffling towards the closest person she could reach.

The driver.

It was some irony, Keith figured, as the woman murdered her murderer. It was possibly deserved too, but he didn’t have the time to think about the ethics of it. Rather, he broke out into a sprint, like everyone else, and tried as hard as he could to get well away from the shit show forming behind him.

 

 

**DAY TWO**

He was holed up at Lance’s, because where else would he go when all hell broke loose in the mortal world, and the fires of the apocalypse were claiming everything in sight? Lance triple locked the door and barricaded it with furniture. Inside the apartment, the four of them camped out in the living room: Keith, Lance, Hunk and Pidge.

They had all run to the same place when the news broke out. It was still on the TV now, playing on repeat: a warning to hide in homes until the threat was contained. Only, the threat was growing.

It had only been a day but fires had broken out across Garrison, the town Keith had called his home for all twenty-one years of his life. With the fires, families burnt and scrambled from their homes, charred messes with murderous tendencies. Hunk called them zombies but Keith didn’t want to think about that yet.

“We don’t live in a science fiction movie,” he’d said in response, smoking out of Lance’s window. It was the only one that they hadn’t boarded up: the only one that couldn’t be accessed from a fire escape, other window, or sheer luck. Also, Lance didn’t like smoke in the house.

Keith had almost run out of cigarettes.

“Maybe we live in a science fiction novel,” Hunk had suggested. “Or maybe it isn’t science fiction, maybe it’s science _fact_ and we’re screwed.”

“We’re screwed whether it’s a fact or not,” Lance had muttered under his breath.

Outside in the hallway, there was a light banging on the door. It came around every half an hour or so, accompanied with moans and groans. They could hear the family in the apartment above, crying. It was Pidge’s ruling that they should be quiet – every zombie movie she’d seen had suggested that zombies were attracted to noise. They kept the TV on a quiet setting, waiting for news, and started rationing the food early on.

“And water,” Pidge decided. “We need to bottle up as much as possible in case they cut the water off.” The group had filled every container they could find with water, and began filling backpacks and duffles with supplies, in case they had to go on short notice.

Still, they stayed hunkered in Lance’s apartment, waiting for the fires to go out.

 

**DAY SEVEN**

The fires raged and Keith grew irritable with the colour red.

He’d run out of cigarettes too early in the apocalypse and in return, he’d started scratching at his skin, rubbing it raw as the cravings passed over him in waves. The ocean, Lance had said once, was an uncontained monster. It was something to be feared. Whether the waves of their favourite beach looked gentle, they were vicious at heart and would pull you under without hesitation if you let them.

Without his cigarettes, Keith finally understood what he meant.

And without food, the group was going to die.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Hunk said. The TV wasn’t giving them hope and the electricity stopped working that morning. The moaning in the hallway had slowed to every hour or two now – the dead were finding their way out of the building. “I don’t wanna die holed up in Lance’s mancave.”

“Maybe we should’ve gone earlier,” Lance replied, looking out the window at the street. “Maybe we would’ve had a better chance.”

“Garrison was in chaos,” Keith reminded him. “You watched that kid from down the street get murdered by _living people_ in cold blood. That would’ve happened to us, too.”

“It still might happen,” Hunk said. He was worrying at the hem of his shirt.

“But the survivors have started to leave,” Keith replied. “We’ve got some leeway. We just need to get down to street level, get a car and get going.”

“The military is probably making a safe zone,” Pidge piped up from where she sat on the sofa. The wifi had cut out a few days prior and she was trying to figure out a schedule to ration her mobile data and phone charge until they could get to more electricity. “If we get out of here, we might be able to find it.”

“Safe zones are ridiculous,” Hunk said, shaking his head. “Putting a large amount of people together in one space means that if one person has even an _accident_ , it could kill everyone. We’d be better off in a small group.”

“We’d be better off outside of Lance’s apartment,” Keith retorted. “We’ll starve to death in here.”

They scoured the apartment one last time, collecting supplies, before prying down the splintered back of a dining chair from the bathroom window. It was the only one that connected onto a fire escape, and Keith climbed out first, hesitant and searching. Lance passed through a duffle and a kitchen knife. They were low on suitable weapons for zombies.

The group made their way out onto the fire escape, one by one, and Keith led them down the ladders. At windows, they slowed and moved across quickly, in case any dead were still inside. By Pidge’s estimations, zombies couldn’t feel pain. So they wouldn’t hesitate to slam their head through the glass if it meant getting dinner.

They were quiet as they went, and eventually, they dropped down onto street level. Keith clutched at his kitchen knife so tight his knuckles turned white with effort. Outside, it was quiet. It also smelt distinctly of smoke; the type that wouldn’t let up, that had been burning for days.

Lance took up the front then, and Keith the rear. He watched their backs as Lance led them around the side of the building, towards the parking lot, where his shitty Honda was parked. One by one, they darted from hiding spot to hiding spot, checking their surroundings again and again until they were by the Honda’s side.

Lance unlocked it manually, to avoid the noise, and they climbed in. So far, so good.

Keith, sitting in the front, locked his door from the inside. The others followed suit.

“Where to?” Lance asked. They had a list.

A store for some food. The gas station for some fuel. The gun range for some protection.

Keith took a breath. “Anywhere but here.”

 

 

**DAY EIGHT**

Keith’s first zombie kill was as messy as it was traumatising. It involved Pidge, screaming as the undead’s fingers just wouldn’t let up, and Keith shouting her name with all of the heartbreak he had in him as he ran towards the piece of shit used-to-be car-sales-woman Debra and stabbed the kitchen knife into her head more times than needed to kill her.

By the end of it, there was more blood on him than left in Debra, and he held Pidge so tightly, afraid of the moment she could be torn away from him.

“Motherfucker,” he hissed at the twice dead body.

They ditched Lance’s Honda (“I’ll never forget you, Stella, but your AC didn’t work and Hunk’s puke never did come out of the back seat”) for a five seater truck and tore out of that place, refusing to think of what could’ve happened.

 

 

**DAY FOURTEEN**

Pidge’s phone started ringing exactly nine minutes after she turned it on. They’d found an old convenience store with a working power generator (“Very convenient,” Hunk had quipped, looking proud of himself), and they had each taken turns charging their phones.

Lance and Hunk each had an array of missed calls from the past two weeks, but none of them in the most recent few days. When they called back, no one picked up.

Keith, when he finally turned his phone back on, hadn’t missed any calls, but he didn’t expect anything else. His family surmounted to three people, and they were all in the convenience store with him, craning their necks over his shoulder to see if they could take the charger away yet.

Pidge dived for her phone when the noise started, and everyone froze.

“Hello?” she said, picking up. Keith moved to the window and poked his head around the metal shutters. They’d blocked off the back entrance, but Lance went to check it anyway. Keith couldn’t see any activity outside, and he breathed a little sigh of relief. The phones were to go on vibrate from here on out. “Matt? Is that really you?”

Pidge’s face lit up and tears welled in her eyes. She pulled her legs towards her chest and clutched at them. “It’s so good to hear your voice.”

 

 

**DAY SEVENTEEN**

Matt, apparently, was holed up in an underground domestic bunker – the types families would build during the world wars to protect themselves from bombs. According to Pidge, he’d found one early on and had managed to stay there ever since, but a radio frequency he was picking up was hinting at a larger group a few miles west.

It was too early for sophisticated survivor camps, so he’d called it a rebellion with a laugh and Pidge had promised to find him.

Only thing was, he hadn’t been in Garrison when people started coming back from the dead. He’d been hundreds of miles away, near Balmara.

They’d packed up all the supplies they could carry and climbed back into the truck. They took turns driving and kept going as long as possible. Every chance they got, they refilled on fuel, but already it was disappearing. If they saw survivors, they turned and went the long way round. They didn’t need that kind of hassle.

Sometimes, Lance would sit in the bed of the truck with the sniper rifle they’d commandeered and keep an eye out for trouble. He never wasted bullets, though. Practice was a luxury they couldn’t supply.

 

**DAY THIRTY**

“Alright,” Hunk said in the driver’s seat, “I’m thinking of a number between one and one hundred.”

“Forty,” Keith said.

“Holy shit.” Hunk took his eyes off the road to give him a look. “How did you know that?”

Keith shrugged. “Maybe guessing numbers is my only talent,” he replied. “That and you chose thirty-nine last time.”

“And thirty-eight the time before,” Pidge added from the back seat.

Hunk frowned and turned the corner, taking the group down a residential street. They were finally near Balmara, following the directions Matt had laid out for them. They journey could’ve gone a lot quicker if it weren’t for day nineteen and the zombies surrounding the truck, or day twenty four and the little girl who’d lost her parents and the group had spent two days searching for them, only to find the father zombie-fied with a bullet through the brain and the mother, head caved in and a gun in her hand.

Then there was day twenty-eight, when the girl got bit and Lance shot the zombie and Keith held her tight in his arms, rocking her to sleep as she cried and finally mercying her the moment her eyes snapped back open, whites yellow and irises red.

He’d cried and they’d buried her, and Lilah wouldn’t have a gravestone or a real funeral, but they gave her their best anyway.

They were learning that they had to move on, even when the world was shitting on them for breakfast. Lilah mattered, but they couldn’t let her death cloud their vision. Surviving was their first priority. Maintaining their humanity was up there, sure, but it didn’t seem to be winning out in the end.

“This is it,” Pidge said. “This is the road.”

They peered out the windows, searching for the house number Matt had given them when there was a thump on the roof. Keith rolled down the window.

“Yeah?”

“On your left,” Lance said, standing in the truck bed. “Three zoms with an appetite.”

“That’s the house Matt described,” Pidge said next, pointing to a house on the right. Keith let out a breath.

“Want me to shoot them?” Lance asked. Keith could picture him with his rifle up and ready, staring down the barrel at his targets. He’d gotten good with the gun quickly and taken to calling himself a sharpshooter whenever he had the chance.

“Nah,” Keith called back. “We need to do this quiet.”

Keith didn’t want the whole neighbourhood to wake up from the dead and come after them, especially if Matt was around. They would be able to get over Lilah’s death, but Matt’s was something Pidge would never recover from.

Unfortunately for Keith, this meant he’d have to get out of the car and deal with the zombies himself. Hunk and Pidge had become good with handguns, but Keith preferred the old-fashioned way of killing things. He also preferred the chainsaw he’d picked up from a DIY warehouse, but that would be louder than Lance (if that were possible).

“Cover me,” he said as he climbed from the car.

“You got it,” Lance replied. Keith twirled a machete between his fingers.

He’d found the sword on the body of a dead guy. Dead dead. Real dead. Bullet through the head dead. They’d also found a cereal bar and a harmonica that none of them could play.

The zombies picked up the pace when they caught Keith’s scent, and their shambling became purposeful as they made their way over. Keith breathed, slow. Then he moved forward, first with his foot and then the blade, slicing clean through the skull of the closest zombie. Blood splattered the ground and he moved to the next.

It lunged towards him and he narrowly avoided the spider-leg fingers of the zombie before kicking hard at its knee. The bone snapped backward and the zombie fell. It was down but not out, resorting to crawling now before it wheezed and shuddered to a stop when Keith pierced the machete down through its brain.

The last one was on him in a heartbeat, and Keith didn’t have the time to manoeuvre away. Instead, he tried to keep it at an arm’s reach, ducking back however he could. But the fingers on his skin made him cringe, and he couldn’t move without tripping over a body.

He tried to swing the sword but the zombie hit it from his hand. Its jaw was broken wide open, strings of saliva hanging loose from the decayed rows of teeth. Keith swore and shoved his hands to the shoulders of the fucker, holding it back for all he was worth.

“Lance!” he yelled. “Lance!”

“I can’t get a clear shot!” Lance called back. “You gotta turn to the side!”

Keith tried to move the two of them sideways, but the zombie was shambling forwards and Keith couldn’t afford not to move away each time. He couldn’t sidestep, he just had to go back. The zombie’s face was the most unnerving he’d seen. Dead, empty eyes pooled with blood, tongue hanging limp from its mouth.

“Lance!” he called out.

“Keith!” That was Hunk. “Hold on!”

The zombie was getting closer and his arms were buckling under the pressure. He shuffled back further, and his foot connected with something hard – a body. It was too late to think clearly, to regain balance and Keith fell back onto the concrete.

He felt his bones shudder and shake beneath his skin. He coughed on landing, and only had time for a single breath as he realised the zombie fell with him.

_A distant memory of his mother and father flew in and out of Keith’s mind. They kissed his forehead and called him their star child and promised to never leave him._

_“There isn’t a star in the sky that shines as bright as you.”_

Keith’s face splattered with brown-red blood as the zombie earned a hole through the head. The gunshot echoed and the zombie collapsed onto Keith’s body. He let out a breath before shoving the body away from him and scrambling to his feet.

He turned to Hunk to thank him, but before he could, Pidge cried out, “Matt!” and leapt from the truck.

Across the road, a man with the same features as Pidge and same light caramel hair lowered his gun and turned to his sister. She crushed him into a hug and Keith turned away. It didn’t matter how long they’d spent looking for him, now they had found Matt, Keith didn’t want to see their reunion.

 

 

**DAY THIRTY-ONE**

_“There isn’t a star in the sky that shines as bright as you,” his mother said. They were sat outside, under the infinite expanse of the universe. Her sat between her legs, crooked around him like a shield, protecting a small Keith from the dangers of the world._

_“What about the sun?” he asked. “That’s the shiniest of all.”_

_“Nuh-uh,” his mother replied. “You’re even shinier.”_

Keith sat in the bed of the truck with Lance as they travelled away from Matt’s bunker. It had been equipped to keep two people alive for six months, so they took all the supplies they could carry and got out of there. Matt had said the radio still lit up every now and again with a frequency survivors were using. None of them particularly wanted to meet the survivors, but they figured it would be better to know what they were up to than be blind.

“You alright?” Lance asked, nudging Keith with his elbow. “I haven’t seen you this emo since before the world went to shit.”

“I was never emo,” Keith replied.

“Right,” Lance drawled. “Punk or whatever. You know, the mullet suits the apocalypse way more than it suited regular life.”

Keith couldn’t bring himself to smile. He thought about the phones and the missed calls. He thought about how he had none to miss.

“Did your parents ever pick up?” he asked, looking to Lance. His friend hesitated before shaking his head.

“You would’ve heard about it if they did,” he replied. “I tried every morning until my phone died.”

“Do you think they’re out there somewhere?”

“Of course,” Lance said with a nod. His hands fiddled with the gun in his lap. They couldn’t stretch out in the bed like they used to; the supplies kept them pressed close together. “They’re out there and one day, I’ll find them. All of them – Veronica, Marco, everyone.”

The sky was a vivid blue, as if it hadn’t realised the end of the world had arrived. It was almost funny how the weather had been so great when everything else wasn’t. Keith kept his eyes on the horizon, pulling further and further away as Hunk drove them to the other survivors.

“I wish they were out there,” Keith whispered.

“Your parents?” Lance asked, almost as quiet.

Keith didn’t look away from the edge of the world. “Yeah,” he said, then corrected: “No. I don’t. I wouldn’t wish this shit on anyone, especially them.”

_“There’s my star child,” his father said, sitting down behind Keith’s mother. He stretched out his legs on either side of her, and she leaned back into his chest. They sat together this way, curled around each other._

_“Look, kiddo,” he said, pointing up to the stars. “That’s Leo, you see it?” He drew out Leo with his fingers, and Keith didn’t really see it, not fully, but he nodded anyway. “The lion,” his father continued. “They’re the bravest animal out there. They have more courage than anyone else. You’re like that, star child.”_

_“I thought I was like the stars,” Keith said._

_“You are, baby,” his mother agreed. “But you’re a lion, too. Brave and strong.”_

_“But I’m scared of heights,” Keith replied, turning away from the stars to look at his parents. They wore warm smiles on their faces; smiles always reserved for him. “And spiders. And the dark.”_

_“But you always climb the tallest trees,” his father replied. “And face the spiders head on.”_

_“And you always let me turn the light off when you go to bed,” his mother agreed._

_“Keith, to be brave is to go on in spite of fear,” his father said. “And that makes you the bravest person I know.”_

**DAY FORTY**

They’d been watching the survivor group for a few days, trying to make up their mind. Pidge and Matt were pretty sure they’d been spotted, but no one had approached, so the group kept their distance.

The survivors were nomadic, but Keith figured that was a dying plan. They moved in cars from place to place, avoiding the bulk of the zombies that seemed to do the same thing in the area, moving around the city in a pattern that Matt had marked out on a hand-drawn map. The survivors would run out of fuel eventually; the cars would attract attention eventually; they would pick up too many stragglers for their cars eventually. It just didn’t seem like it would last forever – but, at the same time, Keith couldn’t think of a plan that _would_.

“Fuckers,” Lance said as he came back to the truck, parked in the alley behind an old clothes outlet store. His face was splattered with blood and he was trying to wipe it off with a blue bandana he usually wore around his wrist. “Hate those motherfucking zombie pieces of undead shit.”

“Someone’s in a mood,” Keith commented, sitting in the truck bed. He’d been organising the supplies by colour. It was something to do.

“I’m always in a mood,” Lance replied. “There’s nothing in this apocalyptic cesspit of a world _not_ to be in a mood about.”

Keith raised an eyebrow. “Don’t let the motherfucking zombie pieces of undead shit get you down,” he said. “Did Matt take over for you?”

Lance nodded and leant against the side of the truck, his gun swinging from the strap around his shoulders. “Yeah. But there’s no movement out there part from a few strays. The survivor camp doesn’t seem to be packing up yet.”

“They’re not due to for another day,” Keith said. They’d picked up on the pattern of the survivors, too. “That white-haired woman still there?”

Lance nodded again. “Still there. Still looking hot. Still slicing up zombie brain.”

They’d got the group figured. There seemed to be two leaders: a dark-skinned, white-haired woman who fought with brass knuckles and a homemade flail; and a light-skinned, dark-haired man with a stark white forelock and a baseball bat covered in rusty nails and barbed wire.

Also, he was missing his right arm.

While Keith was not one to care about appearances or even _attraction_ , most days, he had to disagree with Lance. The white-haired woman was objectively attractive, but she was not the heartbreaker of the two. No, the man was the one Keith watched when he was keeping an eye on the group. Keith had never seen a single person contain so much confidence before; he’d never seen a human being walk like they had it all figured out.

In the apocalypse, that was even more impressive.

Still, Lance was brooding by the side of the truck and Keith didn’t really _want_ to organise their supplies by colour.

He curled his lips into a smile. “I know what’ll cheer you up,” he said. Lance quirked an eyebrow. “Shopping.”

The two boys made the outlet store their bitch.

What was originally going to be a shopping (stealing) (looting) trip, turned into an adventure in terrible ideas. It was Lance’s to climb inside the trolley and go flying through the store, crashing into displays and rails and bringing the whole women’s department falling down. It was Keith’s to jump from the first floor balcony onto a pile of clothes, expecting a soft landing.

Though they knew they’d bruise, they laughed.

“Holy shit,” Lance breathed. “That fucking hurt.”

“You’re telling me.”

Lance flopped his head back against the mountain of clothes they had landed on. He frowned and tugged out a jacket from beneath his head. “Hey,” he said, eyeing the jacket. “This would suit you.”

Lance let it drop on Keith’s chest, and Keith huffed before taking a look at it. The jacket was red leather, brand new and only a little squashed by Lance. He hadn’t seen his old black leather jacket since the first day, when he decided he go out without it that morning.

Keith had regretted that decision ever since.

He struggled up onto his feet and pulled the jacket on. He missed the feeling of leather; the way it made him feel. He missed it like he missed smoking; a dull ache in his chest that had been strong and nauseating some time ago.

“Am I a fashion genius or what?” Lance said with a smile.

“Or what.”

Keith pulled Lance to his feet, and the boys kicked their way back through the clothes. Lance exhaled a smile. “Thanks for this,” he said, and that’s all he said. Keith slowed and Lance kept going, climbing the stairs to look around on the first floor as Keith watched.

When Lance was out of his sight, Keith looked to the mirror nearby. The jacket _did_ suit him. The colour red always had.

He figured it was the reason why the end of the world hadn’t been so shocking to the system; Keith’s body expected bloodshed and had prepared for twenty-one years to look good standing in it.

“Looks good,” a voice confirmed, and Keith stilled.

In the mirror, a figure appeared far behind him. Keith swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. The dark-haired man from the camp stood there, and Keith narrowed his eyes. How had he gotten in without warning? How long had he been watching?

Keith turned slowly to face the stranger and found that his paranoia wasn’t reciprocated. Rather, the stranger stood there with the beginnings of a smile on his face, completely relaxed and resting the bat over his shoulder.

Up close, Keith realised he had been unfair with his assessment. This man wasn’t just a heartbreaker in a body, he was some sort of celestial being of a heartbreaker. His hair wasn’t just dark, but shaved into an undercut, and a prominent scar sat across the bridge of his nose. He wore a leather jacket, like Keith’s but black ( _like his old one_ , he couldn’t help but notice), the sleeve of the right arm knotted beneath the stump.

Keith decided he didn’t want to be the first one to talk. It was due to a culmination of reasons, but one of them was certainly the dry mouth he received from simply _looking_ at the man.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” the man said, and Keith exhaled a laugh through his nose. “You don’t think I could?”

“I know you could,” Keith replied, finding his voice. “But I’m pretty sure I could hurt you worse.”

The stranger smiled, and it wasn’t amusement, it was something more. Like a challenge, like a decision, like an invitation. “I’m sure you could kick my ass twelve ways to Sunday,” he replied. “I don’t doubt it.”

“What do you want?” Keith asked, cutting to the point.

“Just to talk,” the stranger replied. “We know you’ve been watching us.”

“I know you know,” Keith said.

The man nodded. “Well, I’m just here to extend the invitation. We’re happy to expand our numbers if you can bring supplies or talent with you.”

“My buddy’s a pretty good chef,” Keith drawled. “And another can dance real well.”

“Not that kind of talent,” the stranger replied, smiling. “Though I’m sure you know that. Anyway, I’m just here to offer. If you don’t want to join, you don’t want to join – but we’d feel a little more comfortable if you stopped sitting on rooftops and watching us all day long.”

“To be fair,” Keith replied, slipping his hands in the jacket pockets, “we switch out. I think it would get pretty stalkerish if one of us just sat there all day.”

“Right,” the man said. He stood across the store from him, but Keith couldn’t help but feel a little affected by his smile. He figured it was just his luck that the only time he develops a crush in three years would be when the world is ending. “Anyway, that’s it. Maybe I’ll see you around.”

The stranger turned to the door and took a few steps before Keith spoke. “I didn’t catch you name,” he said.

“I didn’t throw it,” the stranger replied. Then: “Shiro.” Shiro didn’t ask for Keith’s name. Rather, Shiro said, “See you around, Red,” and left the store without looking back. Keith barely breathed in the silence and stared at the spot Shiro had stood in.

“Hey,” Lance said, breaking him out of his trance. “If that’s how you flirt then you’re never gonna get fucked before the world ends.”

 

 

**DAY FORTY-ONE**

The survivors were packing up camp and Keith watched from down the street. He knew the timings – the zombie herd that strolled round the city would be here in half a day. His friends were packing up, too.

“Why don’t we just join them?” Keith asked at last. Hunk, standing nearby, shrugged.

“It was your idea not to.”

“I know that, but we haven’t seen anything that looks like cannibalism-”

“Plus,” Lance interrupted, “Keith has a hard on for that Shiro guy.”

Keith threw an empty can of beans in Lance’s general direction, but he smoothly avoided it. The can clattered on the ground and Keith sent a cautionary look up and down the road.

“You said it yourself,” Hunk told him. “Their system won’t last long. They need to find somewhere fortified. Sure, following them around has been easy and fine, but we’ll need to find somewhere, too.”

They packed up the truck and climbed inside, Matt taking the wheel and Lance settling into the truck bed. Keith sat in the back with Hunk and kept an eye on the road as they pulled out of their alleyway and followed the survivors to their next spot.

“What the fuck is that?” Pidge asked, leaning forward in her seat.

“Language,” Matt muttered. “But yeah, holy shit.”

Ahead, the survivors slowed their cars as the wall of zombies blocked their path. It looked to be four bodies thick and shambling in their direction.

“That’s gotta be part of the herd,” Pidge said. “Maybe it split off from the group.”

“Either way,” Keith said, “turn the car around. We’re getting out of here.”

But Matt didn’t move the car just yet. They sat, idle, as the survivors tried to reverse and turn their cars around. But the zombies had already reached them, were around surrounding the front-most car and banging against the windows. Distantly, Keith could hear the yelling. It was barely audible above the groans.

In his lap, his fist clenched. He didn’t like watching people die.

There were four cars in the survivors’ line up, and the fourth’s doors finally opened. The people looked rag-tag, exhausted, and they held makeshift weapons like golf clubs and hammers. Shiro wasn’t among them. They raced forward into the fray, trying to dig a hole to the submerged car, and the next set of doors opened.

“No man left behind,” Keith muttered as he watched.

But he couldn’t just watch, not when the first person succumbed to their throat being torn out, and another was swarmed by ravenous undead.

“Keith,” Lance said. He was kneeling in the truck bed, looking through the open back window. Keith met his eyes and knew what his friend was saying. He nodded once.

“We should help them,” he agreed.

No one in the car argued, whether they were apprehensive or not. Since day one, Keith had been calling the shots.

“Matt,” Lance said, “get us in a little closer. I want a clear shot.”

“You got it,” Matt replied, starting the car up again. They closed the distance by a half, and Lance was immediately up on his feet again, resting the sniper rifle on the roof of the truck and taking the zombies down, one after the other.

The rest climbed out of the car.

Keith couldn’t tell what the survivors were seeing when they turned around, looking for the source of the gunshots. Maybe they saw morons, making a bad call. Maybe they saw those kids that had been watching them for a week. Maybe they saw heroes.

All Keith knew was that they fought with renewed vigour when Pidge and Hunk pulled out their guns, when Matt swung a set of swords around his fingers and Keith produced a chainsaw from the bed of the truck. He pulled the cord twice and the chainsaw roared to life.

The zombies had definitely noticed them, now.

They cut through their bodies like butter; not wasting bullets on anything but headshots, tearing through flesh and bone and gore like they did it every day – which, they did now, Keith supposed. Blood and brain matter splattered across the battlefield thanks to the chainsaw, and Keith swung it around, driving it through the skulls of motherfucking zombie pieces of undead shit.

Together, they tore through the bodies. They sliced them down, drove them back.

The front car’s doors opened, and Shiro climbed out, baseball bat immediately swinging into the head of the closest zom and catching it with a rusty nail. The white-haired woman leapt into the fray, brass knuckles clenched around one fist and driving painful blows into the enemy, spiked flail swinging from the other.

There was another man from that car; hair almost the same colour as Keith’s jacket. He was a maniac, jumping from body to body with two kitchen knives in his hands and a whole lot of heart. He screamed a battle call as he fought and the zombies fell, one by one, until the road was clear.

Keith couldn’t find any tarmac left to stand on, so he stood on a body and flicked his sweat-dripping hair from his face.

Behind him, Lance called out a victory howl that devolved into a laugh.

“Suck it fuckers!” he screamed at the top of his lungs.

When Keith looked away, something of a danger smile on his face, he found Shiro’s gaze already on him.

“Thank you,” Shiro stand, genuine.

Keith nodded. “No problem.” He checked back to his friends, wiping the blood from their faces but only managing to smear it. “Anyone bitten?” he asked them.

“Not bitten,” they sounded in sync.

“Your help is much appreciated,” the white-haired woman said. “I don’t know what we would’ve done without you.”

“Don’t worry about it, though you might want to get moving. A fight like that’s going to alert a lot of fuckers to the party.” Keith knelt to wipe his chainsaw clean on the shirt of a zombie.

“I’m Allura,” the woman continued. “This is Shiro and Coran. We’ve been picking up stragglers since day one.”

“I’m Hunk,” Hunk introduced with a friendly smile. “That’s Lance, in the truck, Pidge and Matt over there. And that’s our leader-”

“Red,” Shiro finished.

Hunk didn’t correct him and neither did Keith as he straightened.

“We’ve met,” Keith agreed.

“Well, Red,” Allura said with a smile, “you’re all welcome to join us. There’s safety in numbers.”

Keith talked about it with the others before making a decision, and when they did, they agreed to join only if they got a say in this ridiculous circling the city plan the group had going on. Shiro agreed the plan was becoming less safe than it used to be, and Allura relented too after a while. She liked knowing the routine of the zombies and thought it would be a good way to stay ahead of them, but that battle only proved that routine could fall apart easily and without warning.

They agreed to started off towards Altea, north of the Balmara, and everyone climbed back in their cars. Keith watched through the windshield and the survivors said goodbye to those they’d lost during the fight and cleared the road to get the cars through.

Lance, sitting next to him in the passenger seat, peered at him.

“There’s blood on your jacket,” he said.

Keith looked down at the red leather and shook his head. “How could you _possibly_ know that?” he asked with a laugh. Keith started the engine and listened to it turn over.

“It’s pretty difficult to see,” Lance admitted, “but I have the eyes of an _eagle_.”

 

 

**DAY FORTY-FIVE**

Altea was overrun. So was everywhere. Keith was tired of the constant movement, and the cars weren’t taking it easily either.

They were welcomed with open arms to the survivor group – a team Coran lovingly called _Voltron_ , after his dead dog – and even more so when they caught sight of the supplies Matt had brought with him from the bunker. Despite watching team Voltron for a week, they’d failed to notice how severely they were rationing their food.

Then there was Shiro, with a smile like the sun and scars that littered his body, creating abstract art with long, white gashes. Sometimes, when Shiro relinquished his jacket, Keith would study the stump of his arm, and long scar that curled up the remainder of his bicep. Sometimes, Shiro would see him looking and wink. Sometimes he wouldn’t, and Keith would admire the way Shiro got along without it.

 

 

**DAY FIFTY**

They went on supply runs to pharmacies and stores. They desperately searched for electricity, and every time they found it, Lance would stare down at his now-charged phone with a dejected expression, still waiting for his parents to call back. Hunk’s hadn’t called since those first weeks. Hunk still kept his phone on him anyway.

They searched for water wherever they could, and took five-minute showers, relishing in the spray, however cold.

They set up for a few days in Allura’s childhood home; a three-story red brick affair with only one broken window. It hadn’t been looted yet, and they found a few cans in the cupboards and Allura’s childhood bedroom, sprayed with the blood of her parents.

They shut that door and no one went near it. Allura didn’t sleep for three days.

 

 

**DAY FIFTY-FIVE**

No one in team Voltron knew his real name and Keith couldn’t say he minded. They called him Red in different ways; Lance in an amused tone, Allura as if it was his real name, and Shiro with a smile that meant he knew what he was doing, and how it was affecting Keith.

In the before, he had been Keith, from backwater-fuck-all-nowhere Garrison. That kid who rode the flashy red motorcycle and smoked more than he breathed. He’d been Keith, who got into fights and came home smelling of cheap booze, his face bloodied and nose broken. He’d been Keith, with three friends so vastly different from him, he often wondered if they’d hang out with him, if they hadn’t been friends since childhood.

In the now, he was Red, and his past was a slate wiped clean with the apocalypse. Now, he was Red, with the chainsaw and the machete, who looked better soaked in blood than not, and wore a jacket coated with it. Now, he was Red, the man who had one eye on his friends and one eye on Shiro at any one time, and no one could tell what it was that kept him going other than a twisted sense of self-preservation.

“Red,” Shiro said in the dead of night. They were on watch, the cars parked by a lake. They were sitting on the hood of the truck, keeping an eye and ear out for zombies. “Do you miss your family?”

Keith looked over. No one talked to him about his family, anymore. No one had in a long time. “Always,” he said anyway. “I’ll never not.”

Shiro nodded. “I miss mine. I lost them at the beginning. We were trying to reach each other, but we never did.”

Keith stayed quiet and tilted his head up. The stars were brighter at the end of the world. Maybe it was the lack of light pollution, or maybe it was because they knew the humans needed their guidance now more than ever.

“I hear Lance phoning his parents every day,” Shiro continued. “I can’t imagine what that’s like. Not knowing.”

“Neither can I,” Keith murmured. “But Lance is stronger than anyone I know, even in the face of all this.”

“I didn’t realise how much harder it would be to be strong when you can’t afford to not be,” Shiro replied. “Before, I had to do it when I lost my arm. I had to. And I thought it would be the most difficult thing I’d ever face – but being strong now makes that feel like a cake walk.”

Keith exhaled a smile. “My parents would call you a lion,” he said. “They called Lance one, too.”

“Why a lion?”

“Because lions are braver than anything.”

Shiro quirked an eyebrow. “Anything?”

Keith nodded. “To be brave is to go on in spite of fear,” he quoted, then pointed at the constellation he’d caught sight of in the sky. “That’s Leo, there.” He drew it out with his finger and Shiro leaned closer to watch.

“The apocalypse doesn’t stop taking,” Shiro said quietly.

“It didn’t take my parents,” Keith replied, almost proud. The apocalypse would never have them.

“No?”

“No. Dad was a firefighter who just had to go back into the burning building, and Mum couldn’t keep going with a broken heart.”

“A broken heart can be a death sentence,” Shiro agreed and Keith didn’t look away from the stars. He couldn’t. He could almost feel his parents’ arms around him, pointing and talking, _star child_ echoing around his head. Shiro looked like a heartbreaker. He looked like he had it in him; like he’d done it one too many times for even his own taste.

Keith only looked away when he heard the bushes move, and then he slipped down from the hood of the trunk.

“I’ll deal with it,” he said, before heading off to the tree line.

 

 

**DAY SEVENTY-ONE**

“There’s not a cure,” Keith said, rolling his eyes. “In seventy days? There’s no cure.”

“But I _heard_ _it_ ,” Lance replied. “It was on the radio. A cure announcement.”

“What’s the bet it’s a trap?” Pidge asked. They were in the truck, heading along the road in their line up. Keith was driving and Shiro took the passenger seat.

“Why would anyone want to trap people?” Lance questioned, kicking the back of Keith’s seat.

“Cut it out,” Keith said. “Not everyone in the apocalypse is going to be nice. There are some assholes out there.”

“Yeah,” Hunk agreed. “What if they’re _working_ on a cure, but they want us to be the guinea pigs? I watched enough zombie shows pre-Z to know not to go near that.”

The car fell silent and Lance sighed. “What’s wrong with a little hope?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Shiro said, quiet. “But it’s dangerous to put your faith in the wrong places.”

 

 

**DAY SEVENTY-FIVE**

Keith found a motorcycle and almost cried with joy. “Look at it!” he announced. “It looks just like my old one!”

“You ride a bike?” Shiro asked and Keith grinned back.

“You think I _wouldn’t_?”

The motorcycle purred under his touch and Keith took up the front of the line, weaving around the broken zom-bodies of the apocalypse. He’d missed this. The bike was as red as his jacket, and Shiro had said they suited. Pidge had laughed when she saw the bike, and then she’d grown sad, yearning for a time from before.

 

 

**DAY SEVENTY-SEVEN**

Keith’s back was pressed against Shiro’s, blood drenching his skin, his chest rising and falling under the weight of it all. He’d lost the chainsaw somewhere back along the hallway and all he had left was six bullets and his machete. Shiro was still going strong with his baseball bat, but it wouldn’t be enough.

The hallway was too thin for this, and they were surrounded. There must be ten zombies, minimum, on either side of them, blocking the exits. They should’ve never gone somewhere with such narrow hallways.

Keith added it onto his list of things to avoid in the apocalypse, alongside people who had fresh meat but no animals around and anyone who claimed safety behind their walls. Team Voltron was never safe but they never stopped either. Their numbers dwindled a little, but they’d collected a group of tall stragglers with more weapons than they needed, to bring them back up again.

Keith coughed on the splatter of blood and swung through the next Z head. One grabbed his wrist and he yanked his arm away, the hand tearing from the decayed flesh of the body as he did so.

“Red,” Shiro rasped behind him. “This doesn’t look good.”

Keith didn’t reply. Rather, he kicked out the knee of the next Z and brought the blade down through its skull before moving onto the next. It was a simple supply run. They’d come with Matt and split up for just a minute when the zombies arrived. Keith hadn’t seen Matt in ten minutes, and often, ten minutes was enough.

Through his jacket, Keith could feel the muscles of Shiro’s back stretching and moving. He anchored himself on it, sending his consciousness backwards to where they touched. He swung his blade and lopped off the jaw of the nearest Z; swung again to catch its brain.

More zombies were joining the fray and Keith was tiring. In a last push of effort, he pressed his hands against the walls of the hall and lifted his feet up to send a harsh kick to the zombie’s stomach. The zombie toppled back into the crowd behind it, buying them a few seconds. Keith searched until he spotted a door.

“Ahead of you on the right!” Keith called over his shoulder.

“You wanna go in there?” Shiro asked.

“It’s better than out here.”

Together, they moved towards it, one step at a time, climbing over zombie corpses and dirtying their shoes on guts.

At the door, Shiro called: “You gotta open it!”

Keith nodded, sank his blade into the nearest Z and ducked away, around Shiro and into the room. Shiro slipped in immediately after and the two men shoved their weight against the door, slamming it back. A hand got caught between the door and frame but it snapped off a moment later.

“We gotta barricade it,” Shiro said, nodding to the dresser. The building was a shitty motel, so they’d found themselves in a bedroom. Leaving Shiro to hold the door, Keith rushed to the dresser and heaved it across the room. When it was in place, they both took time to breathe.

“What a mess,” Shiro said.

They cleaned themselves up as well as they could in the bathroom, but there was no running water. They used left over toilet paper to clean up the blood and took whatever was left of it and the soap supplies, piling it into the empty bin bag and taking it out of the room.

They were on the first floor – not too high of a jump, but enough that a bad landing could break something. They couldn’t afford to break something.

Shiro produced the radio from his pocket, and called Matt. There was no response, and they left it for a while, listening to the groaning that echoed outside their door.

The bed was a double and Keith ditched his jacket to collapse onto it. Dust flew into the air around him and he coughed.

“Nothing much to do until they’re gone,” he said. “Mind if I take a nap?”

Shiro shook his head and gestured away, and Keith shut his eyes. He didn’t get any sleep, but instead he listened to Shiro’s pacing, his calls to Matt and the way he searched the room for ideas. Eventually, Shiro collapsed onto the bed beside him and fell silent.

“We’ll get out of here,” Keith said.

“Might starve though,” Shiro replied. Keith shrugged as best he could and turned over to face Shiro. He’d ditched his jacket too and Keith studied his face. Worry creased its way across his features, and his scar looked more prominent today.

“You know my name’s not Red, right?” Keith asked.

Shiro smiled a half smile. “Obviously. Are you going to tell me what it really is?”

Keith hummed. “No.”

Night closed in and the zombies eventually filed away. They picked up their belongings, shifted the dresser away and started off back down the hall in silence. In the stairwell, they killed three zombies and decided to stick together in their search for Matt. His lack of response to the radio was worrying – they wanted to believe he’d gone back without them but couldn’t bring themselves to.

Team Voltron left no man behind.

They found Matt on the ground floor, trapped beneath a small swarm of zombies that paid Keith and Shiro no mind. They were too engrossed with eating Matt’s intestines and covering their face in the gore. Keith swallowed down his vomit as he watched. Matt’s head was shaking back and forth, ravenous, zombie-fied, being eaten half alive.

Shiro turned away and placed his hand on Keith’s shoulder. Keith produced his gun and checked the chamber. Then, he flicked the safety off and pointed it at his friend. At Pidge’s brother. Keith choked back a sob, looking Matt directly in the eye.

“I give you mercy.” Keith shot Matt through the forehead, and his decayed brains splattered the floor behind him.

 

 

**DAY SEVENTY-EIGHT**

Pidge screamed so loud Keith’s heart shattered. He caught her when she collapsed and held her tighter when she tried to get away from him. Lance knelt by their sides, wrapping his arms around the two of them.

Pidge did not stop crying until darkness had long swallowed the world.

“Is he out of his misery?” Pidge whispered, her mouth right beside Keith’s ear. He rubbed circles around her arms, his eyes closed.

“He’s at peace, Katie,” Keith promised.

 

 

**DAY SEVENTY-NINE**

They burned a bonfire for Matt, and Keith hoped he could see it from the afterlife. He didn’t want to think about where the zombies ended up; didn’t want to think about where Matt might spend eternity.

He cried, away from Pidge, in the front seat of the truck.

Shiro joined him after half an hour and wrapped his arms around Keith’s body until the tears had dried on his skin.

Shiro didn’t say anything, and neither did Keith. They drank in the silence of the night.

 

 

**DAY EIGHTY-FOUR**

Keith sat next to Lance as his phone finally switched on. Lance had run it out of battery and was two hours late for his daily phone call. The phone flashed to life; it was a different one to the one he’d started out on. Soon enough, the phone had stopped working, and Lance had bought a pre-paid burner phone, dumping his sim card into it and phoning immediately to make up for the day he lost.

Now, Lance smiled and pressed at the phone as the notifications appeared.

“Missed call,” Lance read, breathless.

Keith jolted and leaned over his shoulder to read the screen. Sure enough: _(2) Missed Calls_.

“Someone called you,” Keith said. “Who? Who called you?”

“I don’t know,” Lance replied. “It’s an unknown number.”

Internally, Keith wondered about the possibility of apocalypse cold callers – _Hello, we’ve heard you’ve been in a zombie-related accident recently and may have a claim._ He pushed the thought away to let in something more optimistic. Lance pressed the number and the screen changed over. He held the phone to his ear, staring at Keith with wide eyes.

“Come on,” Lance whispered. “Please.”

Keith heard it when the ringing stopped, when a faint _Hello? Lance?_ sounded from the speaker.

“Veronica?” Lance asked. “Veronica, is that you?”

His face broke out into a smile and he laughed; loud and joyous. Lance clasped a hand to his mouth and Keith watched the first of the tears well and fall, slipping down his cheek and over his fingers. Keith wrapped and arm around Lance’s shoulders, pulling him in for a half-hug.

“Veronica, I missed you so much,” Lance said. “Is anyone with you? Did anyone else make it?” Keith watched Lance’s face fall a little, but he could tell it wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been. “Dad’s with you? Can I talk to him?”

Keith smiled, resting his cheek against the top of Lance’s head and shutting his eyes. Lance talked for a long time, and cried for even longer, and Keith stayed exactly where he was. He enjoyed the feeling of family.

 

 

**DAY NINETY**

The truck was officially deceased, and Hunk siphoned the gas over to the nearest car. He took the wheel and Keith curled up in the back with Pidge. Lance chattered in the front. It felt suspiciously like old times.

 

 

**DAY NINETY-TWO**

Veronica worked as an analyst for the military before the world went to shit, and despite everyone’s aversion to official survivor camps where everything was claimed fine and dandy, they went anyway. A few people left, preferring to stick it out on their own, but Keith had no plans to leave Lance, and Shiro had no plans to leave Keith.

Team Voltron was welcomed into the military base known as ATLAS, and Lance ran to be reunited with the remainder of his family.

They were given bunks in an overcrowded room. Some people had camp beds, but most of them slept on the floor, like Keith who dumped his sleeping bag next to Shiro and didn’t say a word as he lied there. Shiro turned on his side and reached his arm out, across Keith’s body.

They didn’t speak, they didn’t acknowledge it, and they didn’t move.

Keith fell asleep and found Shiro gone in the morning.

 

 

**DAY NINETY-THREE**

They were given jobs, new clothes, and had to surrender their dwindling supplies. Keith kept his leather jacket, so did Shiro. They were given guns but were allowed to keep their weapons. Anyone who caused fights or any form of trouble would be thrown on their ass outside the walls.

“Keith is a goner,” Lance muttered when they heard.

Lance was a good shot – a _great_ shot – and they gave him a better sniper rifle and a place on the wall. Hunk was assigned to fix their vehicles, Pidge to their computers. There was electricity, water. It felt too good to be true.

Keith, without much talent other than driving and starting fights, was assigned to the kitchen to wash up after dinner. Shiro, with only one arm, was not given an assignment.

“Assholes,” Shiro had said and Keith had nodded in agreement. Assholes, indeed.

 

 

**DAY NINETY-FIVE**

There was a horde coming, because of course there was. A horde was spotted on the monitors, meandering its way across the country and heading straight for the base. In some places, the walls were brick, and in others, chain link fences.

Keith was thrown off kitchen duty to help with the fences. No matter how many planks of wood they used to support the fences, Keith didn’t see it helping.

 

 

**DAY NINETY-SEVEN**

They played cards and sung around a campfire and pretended the world wasn’t ending. Shiro pressed his leg against Keith’s, wrapped his arm around his stomach at night, tucked his hair behind his ear during the day. They pretended that wasn’t happening, too.

 

 

**DAY NINETY-EIGHT**

The horde was closing in and Lance was starting to see the front of it from the wall.

“We don’t shoot if we can avoid it,” Lance said. “But there was some motherfucking zombie pieces of undead shit hassling a scouting party, and I killed like, seven today.”

“Are you gonna go for the record?” Hunk asked, making Lance grin.

“Oh yeah,” he said. “When this is over, and they’re rebuilding society, my name is gonna be in lights. There’s gonna be a museum about me: the best zombie killer in history.”

Pidge snorted. “You might have the most kills, but they’re all the same,” she said. “Where’s the ingenuity?”

“Oh, like Keith’s _chainsaw_?” Lance mocked. “Or that time he killed one by running it down with his bike?” Keith cracked a smile and Hunk laughed.

“I saw a Z get whacked with a banjo once,” he said.

“Well you didn’t see a piano fall five storeys and crush one,” Shiro replied.

Keith gawked. “You didn’t see that.”

“Scout’s honour,” Shiro said with a grin.

“Holy shit.”

 

 

**DAY NINETY-NINE**

“I wish I could help,” Shiro whispered in the dead of night. Keith wondered if he knew he was awake. “I wish I could _do_ something here.”

“You do help,” Keith replied, equally as quiet. “I promise you, you do.”

Shiro didn’t reply for a long time. His mouth was right behind Keith’s ear and he could hear Shiro’s breathing; it was even, rhythmic. It always was. “Are you on the wall tomorrow?” Shiro asked.

Keith nodded. “Just while the horde is here.”

 

 

**DAY ONE-HUNDRED**

Keith stood on the platform, holding a rifle. He didn’t use guns often and he didn’t care for them much either. Lance was nearby, joking with one of the soldiers. He’d taken to wearing the clothes they’d given him, and he was looking like one of them; he was fitting in without trying.

Keith still wore his bright red leather jacket. The people here called him Red, too. His friends had picked it up and not put it down, and the only time he’d said the word _Keith_ was quietly, when a soldier was taking their names for the record. Keith didn’t miss his name that much. In fact, he missed being called star child more.

He missed the fond tone that accompanied it.

The horde was at their doorstep and the fences further along the wall were swaying. Soldiers grouped over there, trying to hold them up. A jeep was driven over there, too, to act as support.

Keith watched, indifferent, as the zombies hit the wall and stumbled along it. They couldn’t go straight through, so they sidled to the sides and would eventually flood around the edges of the base and disappear behind it. But it was only the beginning of the horde, and it’d take well over a day for them all to pass.

There was only a few hundred at the front, but further back they were packed together like sardines, kicking up dust and creating a sea of brown.

“Z-nado,” Lance said.

“Z-nami,” Keith replied.

“Z-quake.”

“Z-ea.”

Lance let out a laugh. “Z-end of z world.”

Keith grinned over at him before going back to watching. He straightened when he saw the car.

“Griffin,” he said, calling over the nearest soldier. “What’s that?”

Griffin sucked in a sharp breath. “The scouting party,” he said. “They were supposed to be back two days ago. We thought they were dead.”

“Did you send anyone out to look for them?” Lance asked.

“Couldn’t risk it with the horde coming,” he replied, before fumbling with his radio to inform the Commander. The car was rolling along, slow as death. On all sides it was covered with zombie bodies; they sat on top and slammed at the windows and rolled across the hood.

The soldiers moved into action as Commander Iverson arrived. No one knew what to do. The car was only a few minutes out.

“We’re not opening those gates,” Iverson said. “You open those gates, you kill us all.”

“What about the party?” Lance asked.

“If they’re strong enough, they’ll survive.”

“We can’t leave them out there!” Keith said. He’d come down from the wall like many others and stood in the courtyard. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Shiro take interest in the situation and watch. “It doesn’t matter if they’re _strong_ enough. That horde will tear them apart!”

“And they’ll tear _us_ apart if they get in,” Iverson retorted. “You don’t have a say here. I do. This is my call. Those gates are not opening. Everyone get back to your stations!”

Keith trudged back up to the wall and watched the car near. For a split second, the people he caught sight of through the windshield looked like his parents. The next second, they were gone, replaced by unfamiliar faces.

Still, Keith choked on the thought and a memory scattered in front of his face. His father in his gear, running back into a burning building. He didn’t come back out, but he went in anyway to save whoever was left. He failed but he _tried._

“We’ve got to help them,” he said. Griffin and Lance looked over, the former rolling their eyes.

“You heard the Commander-”

“Screw what the Commander said,” Keith broke in. “They need help. They’ll die out there if we don’t.”

“If we help, _we’ll_ die,” Griffin replied. “Or, we’ll get our asses kicked out, which is worse. That’s a _slow_ death.”

“But they’d be safe,” Keith reasoned.

“Red,” Griffin said, and Keith glowered at the way it sounded from his mouth. “Survival has to come above humanity, sometimes.” Keith remembered when he’d thought the same thing, and they’d be alone for months, just watching the unfamiliar people die, one by one. They’d done it in the name of self-preservation, but Keith had never felt more alive than after joining team Voltron.

“If we do that, then who will we be when we’re the last ones alive?” Keith asked. “Just some pieces of shit who didn’t want to help people in need?”

The three of them looked at each other until Lance broke in, “I agree with Keith. We’re helping them.”

Griffin growled but pulled out his radio anyway and adjusted the frequency. “Can you hear me?” he asked. He adjusted it until he got a reply.

“This is Kinkade,” a voice said, muffled. “We’re outside the base but we can’t get through the horde. I have survivors in the car with me, but the soldiers who I left with are dead.”

Keith watched Griffin swallow the information.

“The fence,” Keith said. “They should go to the fence and climb over.”

Griffin relayed the message and the four of them worked through the problem. If they parked the car next to the fence, the zombies would be able to climb over. They would have to make their way from the car to the fence and climb without being caught. There was a kid in the car with them who would have to be carried.

“We’re gonna get in so much trouble for this,” Griffin muttered, shaking his head. “Come on.”

The car turned slowly to follow the wall around to the fence and the three of them raced down the steps to get to the fence first. They clambered on top of the parked jeep to watch, and Griffin sent a few of the soldiers to take their place on the wall.

“They won’t be able to climb it without being bitten,” he said.

“We’ll cover them,” Lance replied, hefting his gun. “Kinkade is trained, right? He’ll lead them through.”

Griffin nodded and they waited for the car together. It approached as the main horde grew closer and parked a few metres from the fence. Only a second’s walk on a clear day.

Kinkade’s voice crackled through the radio. “We can’t open the doors – there’s too many.”

“I gotcha,” Lance said, raising his gun. One by one, he took down the zombies on the car’s roof, and then the ones closest to the door. He made a pile up near the back end, hoping to block the way.

When the door first opened, Keith lifted his gun and began firing on the zombies. They forced a path through the sea of bodies, and the first woman ran to reach the fence. She scrambled up it, struggling to find a purchase with the wooden planks attached to the side, but she made it half way when Griffin was able to lean over and pull her up.

She breathed her thanks and the next one started running. This one was a teenager, not too much younger than Keith, and he had made it onto the fence when the zombies refilled the gap. They clawed at his legs and he screamed, only a hand’s reach away from Griffin’s outstretched fingertips.

“A little further!” Griffin yelled. “Come on!” The kid’s fingers stretched further and Griffin caught them, yanking him up. Keith stopped firing to check the kid’s legs.

“Are you bitten?” he asked. The kid shook his head, but Griffin checked too. They couldn’t spot a bite and the boy climbed off the car behind them.

They’d acquired a small crowd by this point, the closest one to them being Shiro, watching and unable to help. Keith met his eye and he nodded back.

The next person was a man, carrying a young girl. She reminded him briefly of Lilah, the child they hadn’t been able to save, as he pushed through the crowd. But there were too many and the zombies were filling the gaps quicker than they were leaving them. A second man in a soldier’s uniform broke out from the car when the man reached the fence.

Kinkade sprinted through and leaped onto the fence in one swift movement, reaching for the girl to pull her up. But as the man held her skywards, the horde grew thick and swallowed him. The child screamed and Keith yelled, shooting until his clip ran out and desperately trying to replace it.

“Kinkade!” Griffin shouted as the soldier jumped back down into the mess, yanking the girl from the arms of the gored man. They were closer to the car now than the fence, so Kinkade retreated, climbing back onto the car with the child.

Lance shot down the Zs that were trying to climb up there, but it was no use – there were too many.

Absently, Keith wondered if they would’ve all survived had they driven through the horde and waited for it to pass. If they could’ve returned in a few days, all five of them safe and sound. If it was _his_ decision that was killing them.

The new clip slipped into place and Keith resumed firing, trying to make another path to the fence – but the gunfire was calling on the zombies, and the other soldiers hadn’t realised it early enough to make substantial noise at other parts of the wall. They began doing so now, but it was too late – the Zs wanted Keith and his friends.

“Red,” Lance said. “What do we do?”

Keith didn’t have a chance to respond as a zombie hand grabbed onto Kinkade. The girl landed heavily on the roof of the car before scrambling to her feet, but Kinkade was pulled back into the fray. He struggled and then stopped – Keith saw the zombie bite into his ankle and his breathing became shallow.

Kinkade, in his last few seconds of humanity, shoved himself away from the car and the girl and back into the horde.

The girl was crying by now, tears streaming down her face in a waterfall. Keith didn’t hesitate. He didn’t think. He only remembered his mother saying, _“He ran back into the building. Everyone told him not to, but he couldn’t let them die – not when he had a smallest chance that he could save them.”_

Keith leapt over the fence, ignoring the startled shouts and focusing solely on the girl. He unloaded his clip into the nearest zombies and heard Lance start back up in earnest to protect them. He struggled over the bodies of the dead but powered forward until his gun was empty and all he could do was throw it at the nearest Z and grab his machete and start hacking through the crowd.

“Cover me!” he yelled as he reached the car. A bullet flew past his head and into the zombie closest to him. He silently thanked Lance. “Come on,” he said to the girl, holding out his hands for her. “We’ve got to go.”

She hesitated for a moment before nodding and shuffling over to him. He pulled her down from the roof, holding her tight to his torso as he turned back to the fence.

Keith couldn’t bring himself to look up at it and focused on the nearby zombies; the ones that caught his arm with their rotting fingers before being shot down. Then, all in one second, he was being swarmed. They both were.

The zombies surrounded them and his machete wasn’t enough. He was slicing through brains but more kept replacing them; his limbs grew tired and as the gap ahead of him closed, the only thing he could hear through the blood pounding inside his head was Lance’s voice, screaming:

“ _KEITH!_ ”

This felt like the end.

In the back of his mind, he could hear his mother’s voice, singing. His parents used to harmonise as they cooked dinner. He’d inherited their crystal clear voices, but he’d never wanted to sing in front of anyone. Keith regretted that now. He should’ve sang in front of everyone.

He breathed in.

Breathed out.

Swung the machete into another head and yanked it back out again.

There were hands all over him, all over her.

Then, as they came in close enough to take his oxygen, a baseball bat of rusty nails swung into the head of the zombie directly in front of him. The blood splattered across his face, but he didn’t care.

Shiro was there.

The gunshots echoed and the zombies started going down again, one by one by one. His machete sliced through their skulls, Shiro’s bat pierced their brains and blood coated the battlefield from the bullets.

At the fence, Griffin took the girl without hesitation, and Keith started up the fence. Beside him, Shiro climbed, too, one handed without struggle, grim determination painted across his face. Lance kept shooting, Griffin pulled Keith over and they both turned to heft Shiro back onto the car.

Then, silence reigned.

Keith breathed heavily and the two of them leant against each other, taking the other’s weight.

“Red,” Shiro whispered.

Around him, Griffin jumped down from the car to face Iverson and Lance placed a warm hand on Keith’s shoulder before climbing down to hug a nervous Hunk and Pidge.

“Shiro,” Keith replied. He felt like he could cry. He felt like the world had bottomed out and emptied its guts over him. He felt like his stomach was falling.

“Keith,” Shiro said. “Keith.”

He looked to Shiro, bloodied and exhausted. Somewhere, the girl was crying in the woman’s arms, and Keith would eventually embrace her tightly for himself and her and Lilah and everyone who almost made it but didn’t. For Matt, too, he supposed.

“I like the name Keith,” Shiro said. “Better than Red.”

“I like you,” Keith replied.

“Thank God,” is all Shiro said before pressing forward. He captured Keith’s lips with his own, his hand coming up to hold Keith steady – he was shaking, quivering in his own skin like it wasn’t his anymore. Keith kissed Shiro and relief flowed into his body. His stomach stopped falling, and instead turned over.

When they pulled apart, Keith brought them back together, softly, slowly, not wanting to let go of the moment.

“Shiro,” he said.

“Keith,” Shiro replied.

The apocalypse hadn’t gotten them yet.

**Author's Note:**

> So I write a fan fic after a year away and it's 12k - yes that is the most Me Thing i've ever done.
> 
> If you liked this fic, please hit the kudos button and drop me a comment! I've missed comments, guys. I want to know what you like, what you're feeling, how you think you'd fare against motherfucking zombie pieces of undead shit.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading this and maybe I'll write something else soon! (Wouldn't that be a trip)
> 
> ily you guys


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